Exchange Traded Funds

-    Vous trouvez ça drôle, hein ? grogna-t-il. Ça vous plairait que je vous oblige à faire la même chose ?

-    Contrôle total, dit Maugrey à voix basse tandis que l'araignée se recroquevillait et roulait sur elle-même d'un bout à l'autre du bureau. Je pourrais lui ordonner de se jeter par la fenêtre, de se noyer, ou de sauter dans la gorge de l'un ou l'une d'entre vous...

Ron fut parcouru d'un frisson.

While I'm still interested in long term treasuries I'm starting to wonder if I should be balancing them with some mid-term.  I think the recovery is further off than expected, which suggests that both are under-priced,but I'm not sure that inflation isn't still a worry.  IEF might be a good middle point.  Thoughts?

So while I wish its mechanism was a more distributed purchase, I'm beocming a bit of a bull on natural gas and UNG.  It hasn't really participated in the run-up in commodities (which may very well be ending), and right now they have a glut, however: 
1.) Natural gas has high replacement rates.  Just to keep up current production they will have to invest in more drilling.

Since we seem as whole to all be worried about long term inflation, does a broader commodity index make sense?  You mix in a good bit of oil, for both the good and the bad.  The options seems semi-liquid as well which should please Keynes.

I've been working in Treasuries, and I feel like I have missed the boat on TIP.  I had a position in the upper 90s, but sold it at a profit near 100.  I haven't decided to buy back in but I need a hedge against my TLT position and GLD always makes me nervous. 

Continuing to find positions to place covered calls.

Continuing my pursuit to find good instruments for my covered call strategy, I've started investing in TLT as suggested by George Baxter.  Because of the currently low yields, I'm building my position slowly, but the calls pay surprisingly high premiums, given an issue that isn't particularly volatile.  A flat TLT could yield 1-2% per month on the calls.  Of course it seems perfectly realistic to think that the price might come down substantially if we have a rally, but I'm skeptical of claims that we'

ETFs as an investing opportunity haven't been around for very long.  An important part of their mechansm is that institutions can buy in for the NAV, thus anchoring the price of the ETF near it's NAV.  Given that they don't have a long history, does anyone find the news that institutions are investing in them dramatically less than previously troubling?

http://www.etfguide.com/news/512/ETF-Assets-decrease-by-$35.91-billion-in-January/

I think that the ECB will announce Quantative Easing for Euro land tommorw.  I think you could buy the GLD in anticipation.  It has been down for eight trading sessions in a row.  I think it will pop on any positive news.